3">8 WE TRV TO CKIEE THE “ENTIRE POPi’LATION'.” 
the boats bad been hoisted in, the captain looked around 
upon his exhausted ship’s company, and caused the word 
to be passed that the next twenty-four liours would be 
devoted to a I’csting-spell, instead of to the continuation 
of the survey, as we had all feared. 
As I looked around the decks and saw the weather- 
beaten frame of the old foreeastleman and the half-de- 
veloped form of the youthful “ship’s boy” stretched side 
by side in the heavy sleep of protracted toil, I could not 
but rejoice over the order which had granted such neces- 
sary repose. 
We had found little or no difficulty in getting out the 
coal ready for shipment; but our boats were so small, 
and the tides so uncertain, that we had been induced to 
press into service the headman of the village, its “entire 
population,” and a huge skin boat of theirs, which, with 
proper management, might have been made to carry at a 
single load as much as all of our boats put together; but, 
after the first trip, the old fellow imagined that the coal 
would soon cut through her bottom, and consequently 
refused to lend her any more. AVe tried to bribe him by 
the offer of tobacco by the pound, and even did violence 
to our ideas of right and wrong by adding a bottle of 
brandy ; but he made signs that their boat and harpoons 
were their only means of killing seal, — the meat of which 
is their chief article of food, — and wc, of course, could 
not think of forcing him to hire her against his wdlL AVe 
had therefore to fall back upon our own boats, in con- 
sequence of which the work progressed slowly and 
laboriously. 
